This is going to get me comments from the libertarians, but the government NEEDS to be involved in regulating the economy. In capitalism there are
two models. The first is that everything acts in perfect competition, and the second is that it doesn't. Perfect competition is assumed to exist on
it's own if there is no outside market interference, but that's not the case because part of competition is information, and the moment companies keep
certain information confidential so they can benefit, the perfect competition scenario collapses.

So that leaves us with imperfect competition. Under such a system firms compete, and a few will be massively successful. Others will close up shop,
and many more will merge under the big guys. This results in a situation where all corporations eventually merge into a single umbrella corporation
at which point there is no competition... only monopoly on everything.

Governments for their part recognize this, and aim to prevent it from ever happening by breaking companies up, not approving mergers, and regulating
business practices such that most cannot grow and consume others.

Where this falls apart is in who does the regulating. It's a serious problem. There is no long term career path as a regulator, they come into power
through presidential appointment and change when the administration changes. The people picked, are usually picked right out of industry because they
know the sector best. Because of this, we take Goldman Sachs executives to act as banking regulators at the Fed. Who else would do it? Should we
take people who aren't qualified and familiar with the day to day operations and cultures of these companies? This then goes back to what I said
before, because regulatory positions are temporary, that regulator who came from Goldman Sachs must return there for a job once their regulatory
period is up. If their job has them sticking it to the banks, do you think a job will be waiting for them?

This is at the core of the regulatory issue and no one knows how to fix it. These jobs need to be temporary in nature, but being temporary means the
regulator is subject to the whims of the industry.

originally posted by: openminded2011
I love this argument though. Salaried office people, who are basically overhead, alway rant that the workers, the people who actually PRODUCE
something, are overpaid. A good analogy is 6 obese people sitting in an SUV saying it would go faster if they took the engine out.

So you think the 16yo high school kid asking if you want fries is America's engine? Really? If you actually think that I can't help you.

If you really think there is no cumulative negative effect on America having millions of people working in low wage jobs that results in little or no
buying power, while a small monied elite lets an obscene amount of money just sit in banks, doing nothing for that same economy, it is you who is
beyond help. Thats where we are in this country now, a system of wealth creation for one percent of the population at the expense of EVERYONE else.
The fallacy of your statement is its just "high school kids", when there are many adults who can do no better than 6-8 dollars an hour, and have no
upward mobility to improve their skills as a result. This is very dangerous for our society and democracy.

what is outrageous about this is that it's just the fast food workers that would be getting the wage hike, although well other industries might be
force to increase their wages to keep their workforce from flying the coop to make more money flipping burgers. Heck I don't think my husband was
making $15 an hour when we were living in ny and he was a journeyman machinist tool and die maker!!! and there other machinist jobs in the area that
was making less then he was. I can just imagine the disaster if the machinist shops and such (many of which are just small businesses) can't find the
funds needed to match that $15 an hour and our machinist and other tradesmen start leaving the trade to become burger flippers for the more money!

Tens of millions of people working low wage jobs with little or no buying power is exactly why we are in a lopsided economy. Wall Street sees record
gains, but for those who don't play Vegas, or who don't have 401K's or other investment accounts because they have spent years too close to the vest,
the ground game is terrible.

Like all lopsided economic systems, the pendulum will swing and the vast horde will revolt. What worries me is that one or more of them will rip me
from my car and kill me at a traffic light because they believe I have more than they do.

a reply to: ketsuko
I suppose you could move to ny and become a burger flipper, what they heck, we don't need people with your skills, we have too many!! What we need is
more burger flippers!!!
It's things like this that are the reason we left NY. Insane people run the state!!!

First of all, I am not saying that a burger flipper should be paid more than an EMT. What I am saying is that the burger flipper should be paid enough
to live on, otherwise they have to take government handouts despite being employed, which makes no sense. If the EMT is so poorly paid that they
barely get better than minimum, then medical industry bosses need to take a pay cut, so that he and thousands like him can get paid what they are
actually worth.

Where your comments about the differences between people meaning that a living wage is different for everyone, I agree. That is why pay should be
attached to things like the amount of rent you have to pay in the area you live in, and the cost of utilities in your town. This would actually be no
more difficult than working out an insurance tariff.

All of the costs associated should be born by the CEOs and other executives. Why? Because they are over paid, and in the great majority of cases, are
the least effective individuals in the company. Unless they happen to be the sort of PROPER company boss, who actually physically assists in producing
the company product, AND does the paperwork, pen pushing, letter sending, handshaking and boardroom gymnastics, then they are not worth the money
they get, and should be prepared to change their lives for the betterment of the thousands and thousands of people they have working for them, and
this goes especially for companies which employ more than ten thousand people.

A burger flipper should get a minimum of a living wage, an EMT should be paid better, and the bosses of both these individuals should not be able to
earn a six figure sum by leeching off the efforts of those less fortunate than himself. Take Trump, or Lord Alan Sugar for an example. No one in the
world could tell me those people grafted for what they have. They got lucky, several times in a row, and that is all they ever did. There are more
CEOs like that, than there are genuine, hardworking, and labour respectful CEOs.

Put simply, the top should be paid a huge amount less, and the bottom a small amount more. It a not a big change, it's just a change!

Well, if the Employee doesn't gt a decent wage to match the high costs of living, then they could always stop working for a Month or so.... lets see
how the big Chiefs like it when nothing is getting done and they make no money at all.

A big part of the value of a job is how many people are able to do it and how long does it take a person to master it. Minimum wage means lot's can do
it and the skill level is easy to master, so if there are 300 people looking for every position and it takes two days to master it then your
experiment would mean that the labor pool would just swap from the ones once working with those looking for a job as the company just hires new people
to replace the protesters.

That would cost more time and money recruiting those others and how long would it take? If all the shops need to recruit new numbers it would take
much onger than the 'Month' of protests!

originally posted by: bobs_uruncle
Everybody deserves to make an honest living where they can afford to live, not excessively, but at least reasonably. So your point on degrees is
lame.

Cheers - Dave

No they don't. They deserve to be paid for what their labour is worth.

Degrees do not automatically make your labour worth more, that is true. Your friends stocking shelves are a good example of that.

Some people will be worth more even without an education, while some people can't rely on an education to compensate for an intrinsic lack of worth.
The trick is to find something that plays to your strengths.

It wasn't that long ago that my wife and I both supported our household on minimum wage jobs (back when minimum wage was still less than $7.25, right
before the last increase). If i don't want to have all the bells and whistles in life....we made it. And we found upward mobility.

Olaru below points out that, essentially, minimum wage will get you a minimum effort. I capitalized on that, because I also realized my next
interview started yesterday. So I found upward mobility by working that job like it really mattered, like it was the most lucrative job ever.

The problem here isn't minimum wage. Its that our middle class jobs were gutted and offshored. McDonalds never did pay a lot of money, and it really
never was an issue. Until now, when all the middle class jobs are gone and the former middle class workers are needing to find middle class work.

Yes, the rich have gotten richer. But increasing minimum wage doesn't make them poorer. It makes the middle class poorer. I just don't see how
anyone wins other than the wealthy.

We are all of us born with our own strengths and weaknesses. It benefits society as a whole to encourage us to understand and accept our strengths,
while it damages society as a whole to refuse to acknowledge our weaknesses.

Not everyone can win a race. Not everyone can draw a recognisable picture. Not everyone can dig a ditch or reinvent our understanding of physics. That
doesn't make any one of those people less worthwhile, it just means that each has a different strength that will let them prosper best if different
scenarios.

What everybody should have, in my opinion, is an equal opportunity to be judged on their own merits. Not just by others, but by themselves.

originally posted by: TrueBrit
All of the costs associated should be born by the CEOs and other executives. Why? Because they are over paid, and in the great majority of cases, are
the least effective individuals in the company.

Using Aetna as an example and because their CEO, Mark Bertolini, was one of the highest grossing CEO last year at $30,700,000, if you were to pay him
nothing and disburse his salary to the rest of the company's employees they would get a whopping 30 cents an hour increase.

The trope of 'CEOs make too much' is typically not founded in facts but makes great class warfare ammunition and 'fiscal justice' platitudes.

edit on 26-7-2015 by AugustusMasonicus because: networkdude has no beer becuase Natty Ice costs a dollar a can but the dollar is worth 70
cents

We are all of us born with our own strengths and weaknesses. It benefits society as a whole to encourage us to understand and accept our strengths,
while it damages society as a whole to refuse to acknowledge our weaknesses.

Not everyone can win a race. Not everyone can draw a recognisable picture. Not everyone can dig a ditch or reinvent our understanding of physics. That
doesn't make any one of those people less worthwhile, it just means that each has a different strength that will let them prosper best if different
scenarios.

What everybody should have, in my opinion, is an equal opportunity to be judged on their own merits. Not just by others, but by themselves.

Why didn't you include my whole quote? I actually agreed with you but apparently you just want to cherry pick my quote to make partisan points.

originally posted by: olaru12
Pretend to pay me and I'll pretend to work.

You get what you pay for.....

Unless you are part of the 1%.....All men are created equal...some are just more equal than others.

That isn't true in the real world because people aren't a replicated sceientific formulae.

People are born with a body, insides and a brain. From there people develop their own personalities, ambition, drive, work ethic and the like.

It takes all types of people to make the world work from surgeon to an engineer to a retail worker to a burger flipper. Their is nothing wrong with
saying "the engineer that designed this 56 million dollar building should and will get paid substantially more than this guy that flips burgers" .
That isn't me saying 1 person is more valuable than another but rather that from a professional standpoint the engineer has a much higher skill set
and should get compensated accordingly.

originally posted by: EvillerBob
No they don't. They deserve to be paid for what their labour is worth.

Degrees do not automatically make your labour worth more, that is true. Your friends stocking shelves are a good example of that.

Some people will be worth more even without an education, while some people can't rely on an education to compensate for an intrinsic lack of worth.
The trick is to find something that plays to your strengths.

Such is life.

You appear to be assigning worth to individuals. This understanding is flawed.

There are differences, though they do not reflect the vast disparity in cost of living between these areas. If you earned $50k in New York City, it
would be roughly equivalent to earning $20k in Oklahoma City (save compared to Brooklyn, where it would be about $28k). Similarly, if you were to
earn $50k in Los Angeles, you would only need to earn $33k in Oklahoma City to have the same cost of living.

Yet, it is not necessarily always the case - a retail job at a large retailer may pay pretty similarly whether the business is in Los Angeles or
Oklahoma City or New York City (unless otherwise constrained). For example, look at Target: Target Salaries in Los Angeles, CA

You'll notice that the differences in Cashier and Sales Floor Team Member between the three cities are nowhere close to those differences.
Only the higher level positions begin to approach an equivalent ratio; more than the higher skill programmer job, even.

That is interesting, isn't it? See, pay differences between these areas is not about the work you do, but about the power you wield. People
in leadership roles have more say in how businesses are run. They have more ability to negotiate their pay.

That is the deal. That is why companies hate unions, for example. One individual is pretty powerless to negotiate with a monolithic
corporation. On the other hand, if they have specific knowledge or skills, then they might feel free to negotiate knowing that a company needs
that person to function and that their knowledge/skills are in need by other organizations.

Now, programmers are a bit harder to find than cashiers, so they tend to be able to get a higher salary. A business would like to pay them as little
as possible, but enough to retain their services; offer too little, and nobody's going to bite. You cannot throw any Joe or Jane off of the street
into a programming job and expect immediate performance. On the other hand, you could do something like that for a cashier. Companies will push down
pay as much as they can, but high enough to get workers.

You might say that's another way of saying that a person is worth an amount - but you are mistaking the distinction. If every one of those computer
programmers above earning ~60k decided they would voluntarily accept only the Target cashier or sales floor pay rate... companies would love
to do that. They would do it in an instant, and pocket the rest.

Thus, your pay is based on as little as a company is willing to spend modified by your power to negotiate pay.

Companies do not pay people what their labor is worth; otherwise, they would not earn a profit - pure and simple. It's a prisoner's dilemma; if
everyone refused to work below $15/hr, then the lowest-paying job would be $15/hr.

I agree with your post - government regulation is key in a capitalist society because of precisely what you mention. A major problem with our current
situation is that the regulation is created to protect certain established businesses which are a minority in number but in monetary power are a
massive influence.

The massive amounts of money spent on lobbyists is a result of the current crony capitalism which America is falling into from the top down, not the
bottom up. Though I believe this can be corrected, it will be a tough fight for us at the bottom.

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